


Reenactors, Chapter 3

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Series: Reenactors [3]
Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the outset of the engagement between the <i>Shannon</i> and <i>Chesapeake</i>, Jack and Stephen find themselves inexplicably on the deck of <i>USS Constitution</i> in Boston two hundred years in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reenactors, Chapter 3

  _ **5 June 2013 -- Day 5**_

_**Dr. Beales knew someone in the neighbourhood who would rent us apartments for cash, no questions asked to be sublet until January 1. Apparently, it is an illegal abode, at 9 Monument Street, two intersections, known as “blocks” in America, away from the library. It is in a basement with a small bedroom, small “bath room”, small sitting room and a scullery with a sink and cold box for food and some cooking device I do not apprehend the use of. It is $1,000 a month. It is furnished with a large bed, a table, two chairs, a settee, and linens and dishes.  Jack and I looked at it and handed the money over immediately. They wanted a tenant badly as the month has just started. It is a tremendous relief to close and lock a door between us and the outside world and to cease having to fear that we should be discovered on board.** _

_**I overheard us being discussed by various people on the** _ **Constitution** _**as we are objects of curiosity. Among the theories mentioned: Our manners mark us clearly as minor British nobility. We are both obviously professors in a famous English university, since we speak in such an educated way that they understand virtually nothing we say. Jack is a cousin of the royal family, perhaps a Lord or Duke in his own right and here for the summer as a lark. I was his roommate in university or was in his regiment or we are certainly related, cousins. Jack must have a palatial estate with a deer park and thousands of acres in Scotland and attended the royal wedding last year or is the uncle of a lady named Kate Middleton and is famous in England. We are so rich that we have rented an expensive suite of apartments and have servants there whilst we amuse ourselves on board the**_ **Constitution** _ **or both of us are really Americans imitating accents we heard on the beebeecee and if they try hard enough, they will catch us in our lie.** _

_**Jack is experiencing a kind of loneliness I have never seen in him. It is far removed from him being the Captain where no one was his equal -- all are supposedly his equal here and he cannot broach the distance of the two hundred years that have passed and it affects him quite profoundly. It is like no situation either of us has ever known. It is almost painful for him, given his extreme sanguine nature, his ease in making friends, his great joy in company of any type, his extreme fellow-feeling to have nothing in common with anyone excepting the human condition in only the most vacuous sense. He is cheerful and friendly as always, the people around him have a very superficial friendliness - they smile and wave and that is the extent of the interaction. Perhaps the problem is that we have made very few acquaintances as of yet. We must find likely places to frequent in order to meet sympathetic fellows, if there are any to be found, if there is any way that being two hundred years removed cannot make those interactions impossible. We very cautiously make new acquaintances and wonder at the possibility of being friends with people with whom every interaction is filled with necessary omissions and evasions. It weighs especially heavily on Jack, as he is so unused to having to be deceptive about everything. It pains him and offends his sense of honour and self. His life and service were so much a point of pride and his very being and now he must essentially hide who he is, evade and lie. That fact alone is near unbearable for a man whose life was suffused with fellowship and meaning from his profession, a profession in which he excelled from childhood.** _

_**Part of our isolation is a difficulty of language. The Americans speak English of a type (a very different type than we knew a week ago) and we speak English of another type and they have a very hard time understanding us and we them, though it is less difficult for myself than Jack, having had the experience of having to parse the unfamiliar speech of others of different tongues throughout my life. We speak the same language as the Americans, but the idioms are so different as to frequently be almost unintelligible as well as the deficit of knowledge that we suffer about the most elementary facts of life, not knowing initially how to respond to a request to “turn on the light" as we would say, "light the lamp" and "douse the light [or lamp.]" for "turn off the light." Multiply this example by one hundred in every possible situation. It is fortunate the assumption is that it is because we are foreigners that our behaviour is so strange, our inability to understand them and respond appropriately so profound. If we had ended up in London in this situation, it would have been far worse in this regard as we stumbled around ignorant of the most fundamental aspects of life, such as the name of the large motor carriages that people pay a fare to ride in from one street to another. I obtained a children’s picture dictionary at the library and it has been helpful in this regard, to learn that the giant motor carriage is called a “bus,” for example.** _

_**Beyond that, there is the separation of the years and perhaps no shared purpose that Jack feels acutely. His entire life has been comprised of well-defined missions that united men of disparate backgrounds. He suffers from a lack of purpose, as do I. He feels it in an acutely painful metaphysical way but refuses to consider it at this point because there is no apparent answer as to why we are here and what we are to do. It is too disturbing to mull over thoroughly. I think that both of us have already considered the horror that would have been finding oneself on that deck of the** _ **Constitution** _**alone, a situation that it would be very difficult not to dismiss as the result of madness or consignment to hell.** _

 

“Stephen, let us lie down.” Jack said. “Good God, I am exhausted.” They walked to their new bedroom and lay down on the lumpy double bed. “I believe a woman on the ship was attempting to seduce me today.”

“Indeed, soul? How did you resist the temptation? Was she an American lady?”

“I believe she was. She was not like any lady I have ever known. She was unbelievably forward. She made me an indecent proposal, bold as brass, before everyone in the group. I felt quite foolish, being so taken aback, but we are strangers here.I thought the whores in Portsmouth were brazen. It is quite astonishing and I was the only one who thought anything of it, apparently. No one in the group even appeared in the least surprised or took any notice at all.”

“Jack, do you think about the metaphysical implications of our situation?”

“I try very hard not to. What good shall it do?" Stephen looked at his jeans.

“These trousers are most peculiar, but they do have some advantages. Tis amazing that we wear these clothes and no one ever looks askance in our direction.”

"Indeed. I cannot stop staring at you in these odd clothes. I am sure I am freakish as well, but no local gives me a second look."  Jack leaned forward and stroked the side of his face gently. "Stephen, might we now make love? It has been a long time, more than two hundred years." He said, smiling. "We finally have a door and walls between us and the rest of the world. This is at least far more privacy than the Asclepia, no lunatics or nurses to run in. An old man visiting the ship told me something amusing -- that here in America, they depict lunatics as believing themselves to be Napoleon Buonaparte. Is that not thoroughly droll, Stephen?" Jack said and laughed. Stephen smiled.

"So it is. Are you up to it, joy? Your arm?" Jack pulled Stephen towards him by way of an answer and unbuttoned the placket of Stephen's jeans with his left hand, a clumsy operation and his hand trembled, as well.

"Stephen, undress me if you please. My arms are absurdly tired." Stephen did so, kissing him as he removed each garment. A strange sentiment stirred in his breast, an odd mixture of  profound grief, relief and happiness. He was not on a honeymoon with Diana, but neither was he alone in this incomprehensible reality, sentenced to a lifelong mental solitary confinement with no one on earth sharing any aspect of life as he had ever known it. He was with Jack, his very closest friend on earth, the person the Holy Mother had told him in Mahón would always save him. He knew Jack must be experiencing something similar. Neither one of them would articulate a word of it. It was all still very fresh and very painful and yet they fell into each other's arms with the happiness of mutual desire and deep relief.  He found tremendous solace in Jack's body.

"Jack, you must lie so as to put no pressure on your arm, my dear." Stephen said. "Tell me what you wish and we shall find a way." He was completely unsurprised when Jack wept afterwards for his own eyes were filled with tears of the most confused mix of emotions he had ever known.

 

__

_**6 June, 2013 -- Day 6** _

  
_**I have read more in the past week than ever in my lifetime. I started a book this morning that I borrowed from the library yesterday evening and I could scarce put it down all day, to my regret, for nothing I have ever read has angered and shocked and saddened me more.** _

_**A cataclysmic event occurred in Ireland thirty-two years after our disappearance from the deck of the**_ **Shannon** _**, an event so horrendous that Irish history is now considered to have been bisected by it, an event called an Gorta Mór in Irish, "the Great Hunger," one of the most catastrophic famines in the history of the human race; a famine that was responsible for the deaths of up to a million and a half of my countrymen, chiefly peasants, in the second half of the 1840s, after a scourge infected and destroyed the potato crops of sequential years. Ireland had, of course, experienced famines in the past, indeed, there was a very severe famine that happened about thirty years before my own birth, caused by extremely cold weather. This more recent famine, though initiated by an infection wiping out the potato crop of sequential years was exacerbated in its lethality by the policies, laws and actions of the English to impoverish the Irish peasantry to the greatest extent possible and then use their impoverishment as proof of their subhuman status.** _

_**A million and a half of my countrymen starved to death or died of pestilence in their severely weakened states as Ireland was forced to send thirty to fifty shiploads of food per day to England. Ireland lost half of her 1845 population over the next hundred years, as a result, historians agree, of infamously culpable actions and inaction on the part of her English overlords in the form of legal and economic policies that prolonged and deepened the suffering, increasing the deaths and the despair.** _

_**I find myself filled with rage of a degree that I have never known, all the stranger since it is now more than one hundred and fifty years after the fact. The eastern coast of the United States from Boston to Baltimore is filled with millions of descendants of Irish immigrants who fled Eire in order to survive. My hand trembles as I write these words. One and a half million dead, de facto murdered by callous indifference to the most egregious human suffering, motivated primarily by greed and bigotry; mothers attempting to breastfeed their grown sons to keep them alive whilst they worked in situations little better than slave labour for British funded public works projects and expended more energy than they could earn money to buy overpriced food to prevent their wasting away; little children eating turf because their empty bellies drove them to do it even as they knew it would sicken them, their pitiful marasmic forms ending up in mass graves.** _

_**The difference two hundred years later, now that Ireland is no longer under the thumb of her British overlords is that apparently we speak openly of that which we could only discuss amongst ourselves and generally behind closed doors: the extreme contempt, disdain and even hatred with which we were held by bureaucrats in Whitehall and English politicians, their view of us as a race of subhuman savages for whom death by starvation was “an act of wisdom by divine Providence" and their hatred of us which was and is provoked for the most part by proximity: the mere unfortunate chance of our existence as their closest external neighbours. The self-evident conclusion is now openly spoken of that we need not fear recrimination: their hatred of us was so great that they prospered as happenstance abetted them during the famine and approved of our near extermination as a people, a logical consequence of English governmental policy from 1649 on. Apparently, despite the two hundred years that have passed since 1813, a significant number of the English still have hatred and derision for us, still repeat the same time worn slanders about us: our simplicity, our natural tendency to idleness and dishonesty, our childlike ways in need of external management, our collective lack of desire to assimilate to the ways of our betters.** _

_**I cannot possibly discuss this topic with Jack. There is no way that he could see any discussion of it for anything other than what it would be, an attack on his country and its people, an attack on an entity to which he is supremely loyal, for which he would accept any sacrifice, including death. There have been many subjects related to Ireland over the past thirteen years I could never actually discuss with him in any depth and with anything resembling candour, given his position, his ignorance and the bigotry he was raised in, but the difference was that he was not my only friend on the face of the earth, the only person to whom I could hope to ever speak with more or less complete forthrightness for the rest of my life. That is exactly the situation now. I should do nothing to give him pain for something over which he bears no responsibility whatever, no culpability in the least; for he that believes in collective culpability because of membership in nationality is a moral imbecile. I love Jack best of all men, indeed of any I have ever known, there is no one dearer to me on earth, no one.  I do not know, however, how I can bear the magnitude of this grief alone.** _

_**Here I sit with my peculiar status, British subject, surgeon in the Royal Navy, agent in naval intelligence in service to the King, in service to the entity that would enable over a million unfortunate souls, over a million of my countrymen to die during what would have been, with the blessing, my own natural life time. Not that any of that matters at this late juncture. Could actual limbo be any stranger than this reality, where my own agency qua warrior and perhaps qua man is of no import whatever, where I have no conception of God's will and why Jack and I should be here together? What a strange philosophical dilemma.** _

_**Paradoxically, I oddly feel as though I have vacated my customary vantage point as a somewhat removed observer of events happening to other people and that I have been thrown into the fray as participant and I do not relish it at all. Not that there is any action to be taken on my part at this late historical point in time. Not that anything I can do can make a particle of difference. I tell myself the only rational course is to put it out of my head and such a thing is utterly impossible outside of the comatose state. Nothing I have seen or learned has so made me hope that this experience of 2013 is merely a nightmare or delirium, but I could not in any delirium create hundreds of historical citations and my crushing nausea informs my head that which my belly knows: this** _ **was** _**real, that this** _ **IS** _**real, this is no delusion nor dream nor delirium. How I wish I had managed to bring a bottle of laudanum with me; I have never felt so desirous of taking a draft before going to bed as tonight.**_

_**I consider these facts and I can but wonder why: why has God seen fit in His infinite wisdom and mercy to bring us here and now for me to learn this horrendous news? What could it possibly mean? Almost one week of research has made one fact abundantly clear: this phenomenon of travel to the future is as unknown in 2013 as it was in 1813. The only such travellers I can conceive indeed were perhaps angels. Are Jack and I now angels? But such a thought is absurd: angels are born and not made and neither Jack nor I are angelic in the least. Surely, there must be some reason, some purpose for which we are here. My purpose in my own life seemed evident enough. Why should we now be here together? What brings us to Boston, Massachusetts in 2013 as opposed to our rightful place in Halifax, on our way home, my marriage to Diana realized at last? Is this my punishment for killing Dubreuil and Pontet-Canet? Surely not. I must go to Mass and be confessed as soon as ever I may.** _

_**If I were at home and I had news such as this and no ability to perform any action of consequence, I should go out wandering and naturalising for days until the savageness in my breast was quelled. Instead, Jack and I are confined to three hundred and fifty square feet. I could go out and wander the streets for hours or days but I have little doubt that I should get hopelessly lost.** _

"Stephen, are you vexed? Are you worried about money and paying for the rent?" Jack said, as they walked home uphill, Stephen in silence. He looked up at Jack. "We shall walk on the Freedom Trail this weekend and see how we do."

"No, soul, I was not thinking of that at all. There is so much to think about without thinking of our finances. The Dear knows how I shall ever make sense of it all or even where to begin. I seek answers to our burning questions, but then there are such holes from 1813 to now. I wonder how long it shall take me to be apprised of that which I should know.”  They got home and took off their clothes. Stephen went to lie down and read while Jack showered. It had gotten warm at the end of the week and his uniform with its winter coat was extremely hot.

Jack came in and sat down, a towel around his waist. Stephen closed his book and looked up at him. Jack was struck by the expression on his face, evident pain and something he would swear was anger as Stephen’s face was almost drained of blood. “I would wager that he is almost enraged,” Jack thought, “though I could not possibly be right..."

“What troubles you so, brother?” Jack said. Stephen looked away from him and pushed the book he had been reading, _The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy_ by Tim Coogan, under the pillow. Stephen had never felt such heart rending paroxysms of rage and grief tearing at him in his life. There were tears in his eyes and he found himself grinding his molars.

“Perhaps you are in the right, Jack, and it is better not to know that which happened or would have happened within our lifetimes. Perhaps there is too much heartbreak in it, it is too close.” Jack said nothing. ”Do you know that two hundred years have passed and Ireland is now divided and what they call the North, most of Ulster, is still part of the United Kingdom? Scotland is having a referendum to become independent of the United Kingdom next year.” Stephen said and then regretted the words almost immediately, seeing the expression in Jack’s eyes.

“I can be glad I do not need to pass for an expert in modern history and politics.” Jack said. “Seamanship and past naval history are more than enough for me.” Stephen sat up.

“Jack, does it seem now as though we are the only two people left on the face of the earth, even though we are surrounded by millions? That no one alive now can ever broach that distance of these years, no matter what may happen?”

“Yes and then I think how lucky I am to have ended up here with you and not alone.” Jack said. Stephen pulled Jack towards himself so forcefully that Jack almost fell. “Pray tell me we shall go find some supper after...”

“We shall.” Stephen said, quickly. He never remembered making love to Jack before as a way of emptying his head and distracting himself from all the painful thoughts that were overflowing in his mind.

Jack awoke in the middle of that night to strangled, muffled sounds and realized to his shock that it was a sound he had never heard in thirteen years, Stephen awake and weeping. Jack sat up. The book fell out of the bed and Jack turned on the very dim bedside light and leant over and picked it up, reading the cover and put it on the table. He turned the light off and wordlessly wrapped his arms around Stephen, wishing that the words he had just read were not the source of rage and pain that were shaking Stephen Maturin’s body to its core and knowing that they undoubtedly were.

 

**_7 June 2013 -- Friday_ **

**_We have been here one week._ **

**_I lost my position today at the ship. I was informed in a not at all unkindly manner that I am not outgoing enough, that I spend too much time reading and not enough interacting with the tourists. I also know too little about the workings of the ship. I was very upset to hear this given our financial situation and I will have to attempt to see what possibilities there are for me to secure other employment._ **

**_Jack, on the other hand, is a great favourite and they attempted to sweeten the bitter pill by giving him a raise in wages to $150 per day. He was praised as being the “best interpretive guide ever” because they said that he never “breaks character.” Americans, it would seem, are great lovers of all things English now. Jack is very likeable, has always been very likeable but Americans in general seem to be very taken with him because he is English and it adds a vivid and interesting dimension to learning about the War of 1812. He has received many  glowing compliments on comment cards in the one week we have been here. Tourists have come back multiple days to speak to him and so he is a great asset to the ship. He has also been asked to give some type of a lecture at the Museum, which is run by the Foundation and very near the ship, on the battle between_ Java _and_ Constitution _, for which he will be paid. They have asked him to speak to the rest of the ship’s "crew" about different aspects of the workings of the ship. I hope his expertise does not lead to them asking questions it will be impossible for him to answer._**

**_Mrs. Adams also told us that he is being put "on the books" and this will confer many advantages, such as eligibility for insurance. I do not understand why he should need to be insured against loss, but admittedly, I know little of these things._ **

**_Jack is taken aback by the attitude of the American Navy officers who come aboard and who treat him as an actor and not a fellow officer. I told him he should explain that he is retired from the Royal Navy after a severe injury in his last command but he is understandably nervous about being asked particulars, such as which ship was his and how he was injured. He has taken every book the Bunker Hill library has on pre-1812 naval history back to our apartment to read. I may be wrong, but it seems the novelty of our situation has worn thin for him.  He seems more tired, dispirited  and frankly homesick. Five months of Boston in 1813 were easier to take than one week of 2013._ **

**_My own agitated state has seemed to have diminished now that it has been one week since anyone has tried to kill me and we have a place to sleep without fear of being discovered.  My devastation at my abrupt separation from Diana and our aborted wedding and all that entailed is somehow less painful now that my primary consideration is Jack's and my survival in this incomprehensible situation. I dare not seek out help from any quarter because the obvious conclusion would be that Jack and I are both quite mad. Madness would be far easier to explain than this reality._ **

**_I shall walk with Jack to the ship, spend my days at the library, meet him for dinner and then meet him at six, at closing until I have found work, with the blessing._ **

**_Medicine has changed very profoundly. I gather that nearly all that I was taught of physic appears to have been discredited, a sobering thought. It is difficult for me to even make sense of what I read, the lexicon being so very different from anything I have known and oddly, written in English and far more difficult to make sense of than my Latin texts. It seems the science of medicine is now grounded in chemistry, never my forte. From what I have gathered, there are animalcules that are microscopic and everywhere that are a major component of disease when they gain entry to the body. Virtually all are now easily eliminated with drugs. Many of the most common illnesses of our time are now of no import. What a glorious accomplishment of humanity, the elimination of the small pox from the face of the earth now for over thirty years, the treatment of the great pox with two weeks of physic and a cure is effected._ **

**_All of this begs the question of how I ever effected a cure in anyone. Jack is insistent that I should continue to treat his arm. Could people's very bodies have changed over time so that they should benefit from a new type of physic and we from an older type? I suppose that is utterly nonsensical. Yet I treated many and lost very few. I was able to perform complex surgeries such as trepanning depressed skull fractures with good results. So much of the art is perhaps is the relationship between physician and patient, their belief that I can heal them makes it the case that they are healed._ **

**_The people I see are significantly larger than those of our time, but I would not say they appear healthy. Of course, I cannot truly examine them, but many appear on the brink of physical exhaustion with deep dark circles under their eyes, being common even in very small children. Edematous facies abound in the people on the street. There is an appearance of generalized inflammation in almost all. The majority of people appear to be phlegmatic. Their complexions are exceedingly sallow and pasty unless they have been sun-bathing or their antecedents are not Europeans. Gross obesity, morbid obesity is far more common than one could possibly imagine. Jack in his diminished state is now svelte by comparison and I, emaciated._ **

**_It is not hard to see why their health is so poor -- virtually no one walks anywhere, beyond a few steps. They ride in motor carriages they own as their private coaches or are conveyed in buses. There is apparently a dearth of healthful exercise though I do see people running away from something daily though it appears they are not being chased._ **

**_Perhaps it is the elimination of virtually all physical effort and labour as we knew it  that was an integral part of being alive in the past -- leastwise carrying one’s own water and burdens. No one need carry a message anywhere, as they have machines to put one in contact with anyone immediately. They have time-saving machines that have eliminated virtually all physical labour as we knew it. Frail, elderly people drive motor carriages of inconceivable power and rapidity, it requires no strength. Yet what do they do with all the saved time? They do not appear the happier nor the wiser for it. Americans of 1813 appeared far healthier and happier on the whole than the average person I see on the street now._ **

**_I have been so greedy for historical knowledge that I have given insufficient attention to and neglected most of the specific advances in my own field, being more pressed with scientific advances as they relate to the world all around me. Major developments with electricity and machine meccanoes, called motors, have changed the face of the earth. I do not come close to understanding even the surface of these innovations. I should think Jack would have far more interest than I, but he seems very overwhelmed and discontented tonight. Sure, this is better than a slow death of starvation on an island or imprisonment in Bitche, but the realities of never seeing wife and children ever again are sobering, let alone friends for a man who has spent his life in fellowship of the most intimate sort. And the distance between him and the Americans is now far greater than it was a week ago._ **

"Stephen, may you shuffle, if you please," Jack said, handing him a deck of cards as they sat at their tiny IKEA kitchen table having a supper of odds and ends. Stephen looked up and took the cards. “He is in a funk.” Jack thought,”He was not so vexed when Mrs. Adams spoke to him. He seems far more upset now. Perhaps it is sinking in. Lord knows he is prouder than Pompous Pilate. The job was far beneath him and to lose it must trouble him greatly."

"Piquet or German whist?" Stephen asked, shuffling.

"Whichever you prefer," Jack said, "as you must deal every hand." Stephen poured them each a glass of a truly indifferent port and shuffled repeatedly. Stephen dealt them each thirteen cards and flipped the top card of the reserve, the two of hearts. Jack picked his hand up with difficulty and led with the six of hearts. "I had the strangest dream early this morning," Jack said. "We were together, you and I, back in Melbury and the table was laid for a great feast. Killick and Bonden were there as were Pullings, Rowan, Mowett, Hervey, Babbington, Williamson even Heneage and my cousin Broke and many more shipmates, not a bad un in the bunch. On the table was nothing but puddings, Stephen. Spotted dog, drowned baby,a roly-poly and figgy dowdy, plum duff, Yorkshire and a black pudding and many more, from one end to t'other. I could not decide which to start with. I stood seized with indecision and I was about to decide and at that very moment I awoke, Stephen, and realized I was here and there was no pudding, not a farthing's worth. I almost wept, how absurd was that? There were tears in my eyes when I sat up, the disappointment of missing out, of not having even one bite was so keen. Do you think it an omen, Stephen?" Jack said, playing the seven of hearts and winning the trick and taking a card from the stock. Stephen played the four of hearts. Jack played the eight of hearts, won the trick and drew a card from the stock, a two of clubs and scowled.

"I think your belly is telling you to eat more, joy. And I think you miss pudding and home dreadfully. May we not attempt a pudding here? Shall I look for a book of cookery for you?" Stephen said and won the next trick and then took the next three.

"Perhaps when my arm is better. Do you find something strange about the food here, Stephen? Lord knows, there is plenty, more than enough, but that said, it does not seem very good. I should not be so hard to please after eating millers as a midshipman, but I cannot help but notice. Perhaps it is because it is so foreign to us, so removed from our time. Not that it has all been uniformly bad.  We have had some decent meals, but not many.”

"I have noticed as well. There is something in what you say, Jack. In general, there is a blandness I did not notice before and some strange off flavours that I should describe as tasting of a chemical, perhaps some type of adulterant . Some of it is worse than the rest.I believe the clam chowder was better ten days of our time ago. It had more clams and less milk, more flavour. The milk is appalling. Not like milk at all. The bread can be terrible as well. The beer scarcely seems like beer, it is so insipid. The only food I have found the equal of what we in England is the better quality wine. I must find a guide to the better vintages.”

“The fruit is not bad at all. Perhaps Dr. Beales may know of shops with better food?”

“True. I have not gone into so many. The taverns we have gone to, the food has been adequate. but now we may cook here so I should look for a baker and a dairy. Perchance we could send out for meals, I do not know if it is the custom. That box in the scullery, I have no notion of it at all. I must ask Dr. Beales or write the name down that I might look for it in the computing machine. A light comes on and there is a whirring noise but there is no heat. I shall ask, too, how they make coffee in the library, she has a cup at her desk at all times. Surely, they must still have some device that provides heat to cook food. I shall ask her about that as well.”

"You may think it extremely ungracious of me, Stephen, but I find it damnably hard to deal with people here given that I am not part of any real command structure. Not that I should be Captain over them, given that they are Americans, but it seems like they have no discipline whatever. They seem to me in the main to be ignorant, ill bred, and grossly self-indulgent. They have become the most childlike nation of people I have ever seen. Of course, there are exceptions, many exceptions, but the majority fit that description.  I mean the civilians, most of whom are the tourists and Lord knows I have not had that much to do with civilians in my life. I do not mean the actual sailors, of course, though that is a whole different kettle of fish. It seems among people whom one would think it not the case, people of obvious stature, there has been a precipitous decline of standards over time. I suppose this is democracy in action. No one's word appears to mean anything, judging by the shock they express when I actually do what I say I shall do. They all have a clocks in their pockets on their pocket televisions, but they are the most unpunctual of people and I am informed that people in the south of this country are far, far worse. The ship is a strange mix of civilians and sailors. The museum is entirely managed by civilians and I should say there is next to no order nor discipline as I see it. Of course, it is not part of the Navy, but it is quite astonishing to see the slipshod, careless way things are done in general. Not the exhibits, but the rest of it. The director of the museum told me that it is infinitely better here than in California, in terms of people honouring their commitments, that it is near impossible to get a dozen people to voluntarily assemble when they say they will. Perhaps this is the way of Americans, for they comment on my English birth as an explanation for everything I am that they are not, but then, they believe you to be self-evidently English as well.” Jack said and snorted at the absurdity of anyone taking Stephen to be English. “My God, how do they ever get things done?"

"It appears they get a great deal done and without resorting to the use of the scourge." Stephen said. “Sure, they do not seem to place the same value on the cardinal virtues we that do -- they appear to have no sense of honour as we conceive it whatever. The concept seems entirely foreign to them, perhaps because we are in a city and they travel in a society so vast that it is impossible for them to have a reputation that precedes them or perhaps because the breakdown of stratification of social classes. For the majority of people we have seen, one cannot make the kind of assumptions about their membership in any group that would be immediately self-evident at home with no more than a glance or two to any informed observer. You cannot immediately deduce by sight whether a man is a dustman or a professor. Perhaps this, too, is a reason they do not conform to our ideas about the behaviour of the well bred. They do not apprehend the notion of one’s word being sacred, the importance of civility, of paying and receiving respect, the nature of deep friendship and other parts of life we take for granted.” Stephen put his cards down and looked up into Jack’s face very seriously.

“I do not know so much of them, Jack, truth be told, virtually nothing. But I do find it admirable from what I have seen that they have at least endeavoured to raise the quality of life for everyone in this country, that they have endeavoured to transcend their most vicious and evil-natured prejudices of the past. They have not succeeded entirely, they are still a young nation, but from what I have seen, there are people of all races and descendants of different nations working together, living together, even marrying. You have seen that on board your ship, but I have not seen it so on land to this degree. I have seen no apparent religious strife anywhere. Sure, that has not created a nation of Benjamin Franklins, of Rittenhouses, Rushes and Peales, but neither does there appear to be the deep seated enmity that could exist among so many disparate groups of people thrown together. We have not been home for us to see if it is the same there, but it would surprise me very much if it were, though I should proffer no opinion, given my ignorance. We also have no idea if the people at home now are not similarly ill bred, self-indulgent and childlike, given that two hundred years have passed and our countrymen and their children have had access to the same inventions.” Jack raised an eyebrow and Stephen buttered a piece of a baguette he had bought at the farmer’s market and gave it to Jack.

”But these Americans have apparently accomplished works beyond our wildest ability to even conceive, Jack, obviously not the work of solitary genius. No one individual alone builds a Tower of Babel made of glass, eight hundred feet tall. Boston is not the largest city in America by far apparently and it rivals the London that we knew. The labyrinths of electricity and running water alone are a towering achievement of humanity, inconceivable in our time. There is no human waste thrown into the street, spreading disease and that alone is a remarkable accomplishment.” He poured them each more of the port. "The ship is kept admirably well, surely you must agree. She is two hundred and sixteen years old and they take care of her with meticulous attention to all of her particulars. She still sails despite her age. The Royal Navy could do no better.”

“Indeed.” Jack said, bitterly. He ate his bread and butter. “I had the strangest conversation today, Stephen, with one of the crew on the ship. To tell the truth, many times I can barely understand their speech and I am sure the same is true of mine, that they cannot make out half of what I say, given how frequently I am forced to repeat myself. But this fellow, his surname was Lee, a young fellow, no more I would say than nineteen said to me roughly something like, “Do you not get tired from being so grand all the time?” I could scarce make out what he was getting at. I thought he was making game of me. It occurred to me that he was saying that I was a braggart, something incomprehensible to me because these fellows on the whole are the biggest braggarts I have ever heard. They show away continually with no sense of how unseemly it is, how child-like they appear, as though they should be in dame school emptying their pockets of their treasures to excite the envy of others with their toys they bring with them to work. His question still puzzles me, but I believe that he meant that the way I comport myself required some immense amount of effort on my part, the way I speak to other people, the way I behave towards ladies, my very being. He told me so specifically: the way I dress, the way I walk, the way I speak, my posture, my movements, the rapidity with which I do everything. "Just stop and slow down and talk normal for a minute," said he and I had no notion of what he meant, as though I am ceaselessly putting on airs by the way I speak, something no one at home should ever say. No one ever accused me of having a silver tongue; as you well know, I have no way with words. I am laid by the lee continuously. I found it the strangest question, not to mention the grossest impertinence. What about my mien requires so much effort compared to people of today?” Stephen thought about it as he examined his cards.

“They believe you to be acting the part of an English Captain and that is why it should seem to require an effort on your part. Perhaps he thought you to not really be English. They do not have any idea that you carry yourself with a naval bearing and that all men like you did so in the past and therefore it comes naturally to you. They seem to have strange ideas about us because of our accents and our now archaic speech. I heard them talking amongst themselves and saying we had to be professors because of the way we speak. But sure, you have noticed that their clothes are far more comfortable than ours. Perhaps that is what the creature meant, that you are so grand in your uniform and you always stand so tall, despite it being so ornate and stiff compared to their clothing.”

“Their “clothes” are like being dressed in nothing but one’s small clothes at all times. They are like rompers for little children.  Do you not feel virtually naked, Stephen, wearing nothing but that short tunic and soft small clothes and those trousers? No hat, no waistcoat, no frock coat, no real stockings, no neckcloth? It is one thing to sit in one's bedroom thus and another to be out on the street."

“I do not. But I am accustomed to aprication and you are not. I walked the bazaars of Bombay virtually mother naked.” Stephen said. “Truth be told, I am disappointed that nudity in public is apparently considered a _malum prohibitum_ here. The summer shall pass and I have no idea how I shall get my sun."

“I do so wish I had some of my own clothes other than this uniform.” Jack said. “Of course, I am lucky to have it, since it is our bread and butter and it is not even mine. Still, I do not feel quite right without a pair of breeches on when we are in public. I feel undressed.”

"These trousers are no worse than your discreditable Nankeen trousers."

"I dearly miss my Nankeen trousers, especially the pairs I had made when we got back from Mauritius. They were soft as butter. I would take a pair of them over five pairs of these trousers. What do they call them, Stephen?"

"I believe they are called jeans. They are at least simplicity itself to put on and take off with this ingenious front closing and the interlocking metal fasteners. No one has a valet any more. You can dress yourself, Jack, even with your arm as it is. You need no assistance to drop your trousers to use the jakes. Surely that is an improvement.” Stephen said and he won the twenty-sixth trick, the majority of the cards being piled in front of him on the table.

“You have easily won again, Stephen. Damn my eyes if you do not have the most indecent luck.” Jack said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Six dollars. There is an element of skill as well, my dear, not just luck.” Stephen said, gathering the cards and putting them in the box.

“What was that food we had walking here two days ago? That we got from that shop with the queue running out the door?” Their apartment had no air conditioning and it had gotten hot and damp that day and the air was close, even with a fan on.

“Iced cream, I believe. A type of custard that is frozen. At the place that had the sign with the black and white cows on it?”

“Well, we shan’t have any pudding and it is still quite early, Stephen.” Jack said hopefully.

“Let us go then, you and I.” Stephen said, getting up and they walked out towards Bunker Hill to the Ben and Jerry’s that had a line out the door and down the street every night in the summer.

“Stephen, one thing I do despair with all these electrical lights, convenient though they are,” Jack said, looking up, “how anyone shouldever see the stars now. I thought it was bad in London in our time. The sky is an orange haze here all night long. I think we should have to go out past Boston Harbour in a ship and look far out to the East to see anything and even then, we might see nothing if there was enough fog.”

“I shall ask Dr. Beales tomorrow how Bostonians do their star-gazing.”

They advanced to near the head of the queue and Jack scrutinized the menu.

“What is “cookie?” What does that mean?” Jack said, frowning.

“Faith, I have no idea. Tis all good, Jack, I do not think you can choose poorly and the names are quite farcical. I am quite sure the custard has no monkeys in it, at all. I shall try that Cherry Garcia. Perhaps it is like something I have had in Spain.”

“I shan’t make the mistake of that shocking indecision in my dream. There is not a moment to be lost.” Jack said. “Bonnaroo Buzz it is, whatever that may be.”

They walked slowly home, eating their cones with the little tasting spoons on the sidewalk as they walked. “Everything has an end, Stephen, as they say, but a pudding has two and this iced cream does as well.” He said, as ice cream melted out of the bottom of the cone and he moved it quickly to lick it.

“Eat faster, Jack, or we must find a laundress in the morrow.”

 


End file.
